It used to be fairly normal, the pharmasists knew the various doctors in the area, and they also know what is a reasonable prescription. If there was any doubt, they’d contact the doctor before dispensing the drugs. I had the ‘interesting’ experience of having to go to multiple pharmacies, filling part of the total prescription at each, when I tried to fill a largeish morphine prescription for a family member. There’d been some sort of issue at the main supplier, and none of the induvidual pharmacies had much stock left. It was resolved a few dats later fortunately.
Things are a lot more digital now-a-days, which hopefully makes fraud less of an issue, and definitely makes getting medicines easier.
It used to be fairly normal, the pharmasists knew the various doctors in the area, and they also know what is a reasonable prescription.
That just seems like a system that is broken by design. If the pharmacists know what a reasonable prescription is, then why bother with the prescription pad at all? Just have the patient ask the pharmacist for whatever it was the doctor recommended.
I suppose what probably happened was that initially the prescription pad was just any random scrap of paper and the doctor wrote down the prescription so that the patient didn’t have to remember the exact details. But, then drugs started getting more powerful, and people started abusing them, so what used to simply be a note to help the patient remember became a secured way to authorize the pharmacy to dispense something.
If the system had needed security right from the start, it probably would have been a system where the doctor sent a prescription directly to the pharmacy via a courier, a phone call, a telegram, or something.
You’re probably not far off in how the presciption pad evolved, but pharmasists, at least here, have extensive training, and some can actually write prescriptions for certain medications. The system has evolved over a very long time, and security is definitely one of those things that’s had to evolve with those changes.
It used to be fairly normal, the pharmasists knew the various doctors in the area, and they also know what is a reasonable prescription. If there was any doubt, they’d contact the doctor before dispensing the drugs. I had the ‘interesting’ experience of having to go to multiple pharmacies, filling part of the total prescription at each, when I tried to fill a largeish morphine prescription for a family member. There’d been some sort of issue at the main supplier, and none of the induvidual pharmacies had much stock left. It was resolved a few dats later fortunately.
Things are a lot more digital now-a-days, which hopefully makes fraud less of an issue, and definitely makes getting medicines easier.
They also used specific medical names for things and scribbled them horribly so they’d be hard to read if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
That just seems like a system that is broken by design. If the pharmacists know what a reasonable prescription is, then why bother with the prescription pad at all? Just have the patient ask the pharmacist for whatever it was the doctor recommended.
I suppose what probably happened was that initially the prescription pad was just any random scrap of paper and the doctor wrote down the prescription so that the patient didn’t have to remember the exact details. But, then drugs started getting more powerful, and people started abusing them, so what used to simply be a note to help the patient remember became a secured way to authorize the pharmacy to dispense something.
If the system had needed security right from the start, it probably would have been a system where the doctor sent a prescription directly to the pharmacy via a courier, a phone call, a telegram, or something.
You’re probably not far off in how the presciption pad evolved, but pharmasists, at least here, have extensive training, and some can actually write prescriptions for certain medications. The system has evolved over a very long time, and security is definitely one of those things that’s had to evolve with those changes.